Reached out a cursor to touch your tab, the site slowly disappearing from my click ...
You should publish a book blaming all your problems on this secret powerful group that keeps punishing you by highlighting your own words.
— AG (@AGHamilton29) August 28, 2026
Call it “My struggle”.
Would be fitting. https://t.co/bhMcdHnPEY
Ed: We probably should read it in the original German.
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Jonathan Chait at The Atlantic: But the truth is that Piker, and the uncomfortable questions raised by his alliance with El-Sayed, is one of the important questions at stake in the election. If Piker were just an internet pundit, his rant—the latest entry in a long list of outrageous comments he has made—would be of little consequence to the Democratic Party. Piker has said that “America deserved 9/11,” praised Mao Zedong as “one of the great leaders of this world,” and mourned the collapse of the Soviet Union as “one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century.” His ideology is profoundly authoritarian. But several left-wing Democrats, especially El-Sayed, have campaigned with Piker and elevated him into one of their most prominent surrogates. So El-Sayed’s alliance with Piker has become a political and moral crisis.
In Michigan, Democrats are trying to avoid handing Republicans their first Senate win in the state in more than three decades. But if El-Sayed wins, he would throw open the doors of the party to a strain of militant politics that many Jews justifiably consider dangerous. The Democratic Party is now divided between those who are trying to force El-Sayed to stop encouraging left-wing anti-Semites and those who give him their unconditional support. ...
El-Sayed has refused pleas from his fellow Democrats to break off his alliance with Piker, who joined him at a pool party on the last day of campaigning before the primary. El-Sayed first brushed off the requests by likening Piker to Joe Rogan, a controversial podcaster whose show some Democrats have appeared on (but not a figure they have brought out on the campaign trail). More recently, he argued that the demands that he distance himself from Piker come from “cancel culture that all of us agreed was a bad idea back in 2020, but we seem to want to bring it back.”
This is a dodge. El-Sayed’s fellow Democrats are not trying to silence or punish Piker. They are asking El-Sayed, who chose to bring Piker out to campaign for and endorse him, to make clear where he stands.
Ed: Chait goes on to paint Mike Rogers in the worst terms possible as a way to fluff up hesitant Democrats. That won't fly. Rogers has a long career of honorable service, and that will stand in stark contrast to an opponent funded through Muslim Brotherhood-adjacent sources who embraces an antisemitic revolutionary radical. The value of Chait's essay today is to demonstrate how bad this is already for Democrats, and how it will likely get worse not just in Michigan but everywhere as this keeps drawing national attention.
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BREAKING via TMZ
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) August 28, 2026
Milo Yiannopolous has been apprehended by ICE and is currently in a detention center. pic.twitter.com/fLZwNG0cCj
Ed: Er ... hmmmm. The link to TMZ is here, but it doesn't explain why Yiannopoulos would be in the country illegally. Stay tuned, I guess ...
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— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) August 28, 2026
Ed: There’s always a tweet.
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On August 27, ICE arrested Milo Yiannopoulos, an illegal alien from the United Kingdom, at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY) in Kenner, Louisiana. Yiannopoulos legally entered the country on May 14, 2019, through New York City, New York. He chose to… https://t.co/Hk6QBUmGDI pic.twitter.com/DbIhv8Z6PI
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) August 28, 2026
He chose to overstay his welcome in violation of our nation’s laws.
Yiannopoulos was issued a final order of removal by an Immigration Judge on July 22, after failing to show up for his immigration hearing. He will remain in ICE custody pending removal.
Ed: Don’t do the crime if …
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The Crimson Hub: Talarico has gone to St. Andrew's Presbyterian in North Austin since he was 2 years old, and he's preached there himself while at seminary. St. Andrew's calls itself "Presbyterian & Progressive," which is putting it mildly. Pull up the homepage and there's no scripture, no sin, no salvation, nothing that would've made sense to a Presbyterian fifty years ago. Just a pledge to "affirm the full participation of all ages, sex and gender identities, races, color, and ethnicities in all our endeavors," like an HR seminar broke into the sanctuary and started redecorating.
Keep scrolling. It gets worse. St. Andrew's is a "More Light" congregation, the PC(USA) label for churches that fully affirm and ordain LGBTQ clergy, and the church says outright it exists to help congregations "lead LGBTQIA+ service and advocacy." It's partnered with Out Youth Austin, an outfit built around "youth of all sexual orientations and gender identities." So when Talarico told his own congregation in 2022 that "our trans community needs abortion care, too," nobody there should've blinked. He was quoting the mission statement.
St. Andrew's also holds a formal designation as a "Reproductive Freedom Congregation," a badge abortion-rights groups hand out to churches that fall in line. It's stapled right next to the LGBTQ material, same page, same self-satisfied tone, like unrestricted abortion access is just another item on the parish activity calendar.
Then it goes full State Department. St. Andrew's says it "support[s] peace and human rights for the Palestinian people," partners with the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, a group whose stated mission is "to end U.S. complicity in Israel's massive violence against the Palestinian people," and has hosted an actual prayer vigil for an "injured Palestinian who was attacked." On immigration, the church brags about "offering sanctuary to immigrants in need of refuge" and runs alongside border-activism groups pushing what they call "transnational solidarity." A Presbyterian church in Austin, Texas, running Middle East foreign policy and open-borders talking points through the pulpit like it's a think tank with a collection plate.
Ed: Sounds perfect ... for Austin. Austin is basically East California. (Not coincidentally, Talarico's fundraising in California, too.) This won't play in the rest of Texas, but I do wonder whether the GOP will go after Talarico's church. I suspect that will get passed along to a PAC willing to go negative to that extent rather than the Paxton campaign directly. If Talarico keeps making reference to his seminary and faith, though, it's all fair game. As for the church, it sounds far more Unitarian than Presbyterian. This is exactly what you'd expect from a Unitarian activist group.
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COATES: Will you campaign with Talarico?
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 28, 2026
CROCKETT: I will be campaigning down ballot
COATES: Why?
CROCKETT: pic.twitter.com/RHNnPmVA1T
Ed: Crockett isn't going to support Talarico. She's not going to help him build support in black communities, and neither is Colin Allred. Maybe she also understands that black voters aren't going to vibe with Talarico's church any more than other Texans outside of Austin will. Crockett doesn't want to get damaged by what's coming for Talarico.
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Noah Rothman at NRO: NPR’s “view from Tehran” is just as dire. Its reporters found that medical services inside Iran, even in relatively posh Tehran, are breaking down. NPR’s piece strongly implies that the regime or its affiliates have begun appropriating the savings from individual bank depositors. One woman, “who works as a baker and caterer, says when she went to the bank over the weekend, she learned that her account was blocked with nearly $1,000 missing,” the dispatch recounted. “Bank associates told her the bank had been hacked, though didn’t say by whom.”
Where groceries can be found, they are prohibitively expensive. And any Iranian engaged in commerce has seen their overhead costs increase by as much as four times the pre-war baseline. As one Iranian trader told NPR, “the blockade is worse than the war.”
The Iranian people’s anxiety is raising fears inside the country that a new round of protests is imminent. A public statement from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Intelligence Organization this week warned that rising social discontent could give way to unrest.
Ed: As Noah goes on to write, the situation in Iran is increasingly intolerable, and the IRGC no longer has US bombing to blame for it. Even the American media has begun to report on the "dire" situation in Iran, and we're already hearing about protests forming. The regime will likely respond brutally, but that may accelerate the existential crisis by creating a fracture between the people and the regime. Whatever happens may happen quickly if the US keeps the blockade in place, and that looks pretty solid at the moment...
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Update from CENTCOM Commander: pic.twitter.com/osPbltjJ1C
— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) August 28, 2026
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Tom Kool at Oil Price: The Trump administration is reportedly in active discussions with Venezuela’s interim government to acquire a direct U.S. ownership stake in key Venezuelan oil fields. According to senior U.S. officials cited by Axios, the talks involve equity stakes in a select group of high-yield fields containing approximately 90 billion barrels of proven crude—a transaction that would significantly alter Washington’s foreign energy policy framework and expand U.S.-controlled global reserves.
The targeted fields represent a strategic slice of Venezuela’s broader 303-billion-barrel reserve base, the largest in the world. The assets in question were previously operated by Venezuelan state interests, joint-venture partners, and Chinese state-backed entities. ...
The White House’s push for direct equity in Venezuelan oil assets comes at a particularly opportune moment, as supply disruptions, elevated energy prices and broader macroeconomic pressures increase the strategic value of Venezuela’s vast reserves. With the U.S. SPR depleted to historic lows and transit routes in the Middle East under ongoing threat, direct physical control over Western Hemisphere heavy crude offers a strategic hedge.
Ed: Duane and I discussed this in our Week in Review episode today. Not only will this ownership stake completely change the strategic energy environment with Iran, it will also squeeze China out of the hemisphere as well. It's a game changer for American power, and it may well put an end to the days of OPEC's manipulations on world prices. Plus, American refineries will get built to deal with the sulphurous crude from Venezuela, leading to a jobs boom here in the US. And all we needed was a president who would pluck Maduro from Caracas and reset the Monroe Doctrine. And speaking of China ...
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Done right this is an industry that won't just remake blue-collar workers lives, it will also remake communities that have been on their knees for 40 years.
— ZitoSalena (@ZitoSalena) August 28, 2026
Always be curious. Always be skeptical. If something does a 180 & politicians are suddenly demonizing it in a short period… https://t.co/0wJNrJDyM3
... [of] time you have to ask yourself why? As I said yesterday, there's always bad actors in everything we do. But an entire industry? We have all seen this playbook before.
Ed: Yes, indeed we have. That's not to dismiss all of the concerns over data centers and their impact on water resources and energy consumption; there are legit discussions to be had. However, we need to realize who's goosing the irrational hysteria over data centers, and why.
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CBS News: Good Good Golf faces mounting backlash for a controversial online video ad that sparked accusations of sexism.
On Thursday, the digital media company lost its three-year partnership with Callaway Golf, while the PGA Tour said Good Good would no longer sponsor one of the association's tournaments in November. The ad, co-branded with Callaway, shows a male golfer shoving a female golfer to the ground as she reaches for his driver.
Although Good Good has said the ad was supposed to be a parody of the horror movie "Obsession," critics have condemned the video for making light of violence against women. Both Good Good and Callaway have apologized for the ad, which has been taken down.
"This is about far more than losing a contract with Callaway. Unless they are looking to limit their market to frat bros, how many want to be seen at the country club or on a course bearing the Good Good Golf brand now?" crisis communications expert Patrick Riccards told CBS News.
Ed: I watched this ad on Gutfeld last night, and like the rest of the panel, I was utterly dumbfounded as to what Good Good Golf and Callaway thought they were doing. The panel seemed to want to assume that the scolds were overreacting, but no one defended the ad. Kat Timpf had a great line about it being unrealistic because a man brought his wife golfing, but "aghast" is probably the best word for the reaction the ad produced.
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Any “feminists” care to comment?
— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) August 28, 2026
Or is “feminism” just a Marxist scam to poison sexual relations and attack Western culture?
It’s interesting what radicals attack and don’t attack. Because it exposes them all as frauds. https://t.co/1Lx5oPyBDp
Ed: This should make everyone else aghast, too. El-Sayed tried defending shari'a law on Jesse Watters' show this week, so maybe someone should ask him whether he thinks this should be allowed in the US as the practice of faith. After all, it's all just "canon law," right?
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🚨New: Jelly Roll tells fan who criticized his comments on President Trump to stop listening to his music:
— The Calvin Coolidge Project (@TheCalvinCooli1) August 27, 2026
“So for those who threatened to stop listening to my music based on my comments last night, I just wanna say with conviction, Go Right Ahead!” pic.twitter.com/OQ9kLpNLO7
Ed: Who is Jelly Roll? I'm serious. Also, I'm happy to comply with his request, but technically speaking, can I stop something I never started in the first place?
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Rusty Weiss at RedState: Maybe it was the fact that country music tends to be home for fans of a traditional way of life in America or his constant references to God in discussing his turnaround in life, but many folks assumed Jelly Roll leaned conservative. And maybe he even allowed that assumption to linger as he plays a particular character for the music scene.
But Mr. Roll is a weapons-grade fraud. Which, in hindsight, was rather obvious. Who would have thunk that a former convicted felon (pardoned in 2025), a former drug dealer and addict, previously married to a former high-end escort, might not be cut from conservative cloth.
Ed: Yeah, still not ringing a bell for me.
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Republicans would pay for airfare https://t.co/Gstc3McysW
— Matt Whitlock (@MattWhitlock) August 28, 2026
Ed: I can't think of anything Republicans would want more than to drop El-Sayed into other Senate races, except perhaps to drop Angie Nixon into them too.
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Last night's lyric: "More Than a Feeling" by Boston. Also, please note that we will not have a Final Word tomorrow, as I will be tied up all day with various commitments. The Final Word will return on Monday.
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